One of the hackneyed charges against Western hacks in India is that they diligently separate the wheat from the chaff and report the chaff. India’s successes, triumphs and achievements, we are told ad nauseam, are ignored by the “nattering nabobs of negativism” who can only see death, disease and despair; floods, famines and failure.

KANCHAN KAUR forwards a story from the latest issue of the superb tech magazine Wired, which looks at India’s underground trade in human remains. For long, India was the world’s primary source of bones used in medical study. Officially, the export was banned in 1985, but Scott Carney reports that the trade still going on.

On the other hand, isn’t this what journalism is all about? Comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. Throwing light in the dark nooks and corners that we want to turn away from.

Is it such a bad thing that the western media should alert us to what is happening in our backyard when our media seem inclined to ignore the warts? Is the western media dutybound to buy into the new rising, shining, incredible India? Should the media only be purveying good news, as the former president A.P.J. Abdul Kalam believes?

Isn’t there a difference between advertising and journalism, hacks and flacks? Or have we lost the ability to distinguish?

One comment

Wired has done several features on Indian technology. They followed the Indian space program especially the success at low cost rocket technology, the generic pharmaceutical manufacturers like cipla etc. which were presented in a well-balanced and generally positive way. They have followed the racketeering in kidneys and human organs before too.

In my opinion Wired is a technology based magazine/website and a great one at it. The material published is usually well researched. Most of them are technology/science based. Advertising, journalism, hacks, flacks are terms which have very little to do with wired.